THE ARRIVAL PROMISE: on member homes, the watch desk brings the house to your arrival temperature on your flight’s landing time — and if the pass closes and you never arrive, the house is stepped back down before midnight. Nobody heats an empty valley for a week.
Services
Six disciplines of the watch
01
Monitored heat, watched from below
Every member home reports temperatures, humidity and equipment status to the desk in Cairnbrook. A drift triggers a call and usually a visit before a failure does — the frozen pipe is a rumour in this valley, and the desk intends to keep it that way.
02
The watch trades
Plumbers, roofers, electricians and the snow contractor, co-ordinated on your behalf and billed through one account you can audit. You make one call from the city; the desk makes the other eleven.
03
Cold-climate heat pumps, sited for the pass
Units rated for the altitude and the wind channel your slope actually sits in, elevated above the snowpack on stand-off brackets, with defrost strategies proven in real January. Backup heat sized by arithmetic, and the arithmetic left with you.
04
Ventilation & the closed-up smell
Balanced HRVs with summer bypass and a fresh-air flush you can trigger from the road: the house airs itself in the two hours before you arrive, so the first thing through the door is the view, not the season the house spent alone.
05
Zoning for guest wings & granny flats
The bunk wing sleeps cold until the night guests arrive; the main floor holds its temper; the ski-room drain and towel rail run on their own schedule. Zoning designed around arrival patterns, not floor plans.
06
The storm ledger
Every wind event, power cut and pass closure logged against the house with what the desk did about it. When you sell, the ledger is a selling point; when you wonder what you pay for, it is the answer.
How it goes
One winter on watch
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
October
The pre-season visit
Glycol tested, heat exchangers inspected, sensors verified against a thermometer that travels with the tech. The house is certified for the season and the desk takes over the watching.
November
The storm drill
First big blow: power cut, generator exercised automatically, heat held on battery-backed controls. You get one text, not eleven calls — and only if the house needs a decision from you.
December
The arrival programming
Flight schedules in, driveway heater and arrival temperatures aligned, the fresh-air flush set. Guests in the bunk wing? The zone wakes with the calendar.
February
The deep-cold watch
The design-week the systems were sized for: defrost cycles monitored nightly, outdoor units checked after each dump of snow, and a tech sleeping twenty minutes from the pass.
April
The melt review
Snowpack monitored against the driveway and the crawl-space vents, dehumidification stepped for the thaw, and the season’s ledger drafted for your read-through.
June
The owner’s report
One page: what the house endured, what it cost, what the desk recommends before next season. The binder grows a chapter; the house grows a biography.
The desk
Watch plans, printed like lift tickets
Three levels, monthly figures, cancel any season. Every plan includes monitoring, the desk, and the trades co-ordination that makes a mountain house cheap to own from far away.
The Lookout
$54/mo
- Sensors and 24/7 monitoring
- Alerts to you and the desk
- One pre-season visit
For the cabin that mostly behaves.
The Watch
$118/mo
- Everything in the Lookout
- Arrival programming & fresh-air flush
- Trades co-ordinated, one auditable account
- Pre-season and spring visits
- Storm responses at cost, day or night
The plan 190 of the 240 homes carry.
The Estate Desk
from $210/mo
- Chalet plus bunkie, shop or rental unit
- Rental turnover checks between guests
- Key-holder, propane and plow co-ordination
- Quarterly deep report with photography
For the property that is practically a small hotel.
The desk called on a Tuesday in January: “Defrost cycles are drifting on the lower unit — we can drive up Thursday before the next dump.” By the time we arrived for the long weekend the sensor was replaced, the invoice was in the ledger, and I had known nothing about it until the flight home. That is precisely the service I thought I was inventing when I asked for it.
The watch book
Houses the desk holds
We bought the chalet from the estate of a man who had clearly been burned by somebody: the boiler room was a museum of anxious upgrades. Whitecap converted it to one monitored system, one ledger, one number to call. Owning from the city went from a monthly dread to a quarterly shrug.
A storm took a tree across the power drop on a Sunday. The generator carried the heat, the desk dispatched the electrician, the ledger has the photographs, and my only role was a text that said “handled.” I framed it.
Our rental runs forty weeks a year and the Estate Desk checks it between every guest — heat, hot water, the smell test, the thermostat somebody always resets. Our reviews mention how warm the house is. That is the desk’s warmth, and I will not be telling the guests.
Asked from the city
What exactly does the monitoring see?
Temperatures and humidity per zone, equipment runtimes and fault codes, defrost behaviour on heat pumps, power presence, and the water-sensor state in the usual places. It sees the house, never the household — no cameras, no microphones, and the sensor list is printed in the plan documents so there is nothing to imagine.
What happens when something fails at 2 a.m.?
The desk is staffed around the clock all season. Most alerts resolve without a visit; the ones that need hands get a tech who sleeps in the valley. Members pay the day rate, whatever the hour — the storm clause is written into the plan, not improvised at your expense.
We rent the house. Can the desk handle guests?
That is the Estate Desk: turnover checks between guests, arrival temperatures keyed to the booking calendar, and the fresh-air flush timed to check-in. Guests get a warm, aired house; you get a ledger of every visit instead of a series of anecdotes.
Is a heat pump realistic at altitude?
The cold-climate units we install are rated for exactly this work and sited for it — elevated past the snowpack, sheltered from the katabatic wind where the survey says to, defrost cycles the desk has watched through seven Februaries. The backup is sized by calculation and honest about the nights it earns its keep.
Can you take over a house that already has equipment?
That is most of the fleet. The pre-season visit certifies what is there, the sensors go on whatever the house owns, and the first season’s ledger notes what will need attention and when. We watch houses, not brands.
Put the house on watch before the pass closes.
Tell us where the house sits and what it heats with. The desk replies with the sensor plan and the first certification date — October books out by the first week of September.